Systematic Reviews

Contact: Joanne Walsh Crowley

Director of Operations & Clinical Trials

Research funding schemes are likely to insist that a satisfactory review of the existing evidence to inform your research proposal has been completed. The staff at the HRB Clinical Research Facility University College Cork are available to advise and support investigators in this process (as time and resources allow).

The standard for what constitutes a satisfactory review of the existing evidence to inform your research proposal may vary. For the HRB Definitive Intervention and Feasibility Awards (2018) the standard is as follows:

• A relevant Cochrane Systematic Review or
• If no Cochrane Review exists, then another systematic review that is published in a peer reviewed journal or
• If no published systematic review is identified then the Lead Applicant and research team should present the findings of a systematic review that they have undertaken for the purposes of the application. Importantly, in this case applicants are required to provide sufficient details of the methodologies employed to allow evaluate confidence in the findings and to allow the review to be replicated. Simple literature overviews are not sufficient.
• Additional evidence may be provided through formal input from relevant Irish patients, service users or carers. However this does not substitute for systematically gathered evidence.

(HRB 2017)

Please contact Joanne Walsh Crowley (HRB CRF-UCC Interim Director)